We all know confidently incorrect people. People displaying dunning-kruger. The majority of those people have low education and without someone giving them objectively true feedback on their opinions through their developmental years, they start to believe everything they think is true even without evidence.
Memorizing facts, dates, and formulas aren’t what necessarily makes someone intelligent. It’s the ability to second guess yourself and have an appropriate amount of confidence relative to your knowledge that is a sign of intelligence.
I could be wrong though.
Totally agree with you about the importance of feedback. With no feedback, you won’t know how wrong or right you are. You’ve also connected feedback with confidence, and that was a pretty good point. Formal education provides the feedback, which then adjusts your confidence to a more realistic level. Great observations, good post. 👍
However, many people get sidetracked by the way you mix up terminology. Maybe you should stop and think what exactly goes into the list you label “intelligence” or “being smart”. Are they the same thing, or are those lists different? Maybe they are separate lists, but there’s overlap? Either way, I suggest you sit down and reflect on the meaning of those terms. Maybe even write that list. Once you’ve done that, see how wikipedia describes intelligence.
As you can see from the number of comments, most people don’t agree with the way you use these terms. That’s the feedback you’re getting from this post, and it’s a great learning experience. Think of it like an exam, where the 100 teachers in this post are taking out their red markers and crossing out half your post.
I may have missed it but I’ve only seen you and 1 other comment say I mix up the terms, if you can point out where I’m mixing them up then maybe I can correct or clarify myself. I am fully aware of the difference between knowledge and intelligence.
That’s interesting, because the original post certainly didn’t sound like that. Thanks for the clarification anyway. I’m glad we’re on the same page here.
Which part is ambiguous to you though?
Here’s the first one.
This passage implies that you can increase your intelligence by getting educated, learning facts, gaining more knowledge, receiving feedback and getting a more realistic understanding on what you know and don’t know. Based on some of your clarifications, that doesn’t seem to be what you intended to say.
It literally says memorizing data isn’t what makes someone intelligent. Second guessing yourself because of factual feedback you’ve received and not being falsely confident in everything you think is what makes someone intelligent.
Haven’t read the stat in a while but it’s something like an average increase of 5 IQ points for every year of school you attend. That increase isn’t necessarily because of the data you’ve retained, it’s from being tested on it and adjusting how you approach new concepts based on that feedback.
IQ is just a number that tells you how good you’re at doing specific kinds of tests. It’s associated with intelligence, but it’s still a proxy metric. It doesn’t actually measure the thing we’re really interested in. We don’t even know what intelligence really is, or how to measure it properly.
No it’s not extremely accurate and it becomes less accurate the more times someone takes one or knows about the tests. But it is the only scale we have to gauge intelligence. In the same sense that if I don’t have a measuring tape to tell you how long a stick is, I can give you a rough idea through many hand-widths long it is.
I don’t know about others, but I refer to intelligence as the broad dictionary definition of someones ability to learn, that pattern recognition and problem solving. Learning in itself is a skill, which is why there are courses in post secondary that are specifically focused on teaching you how to study and learn efficiently. If what you’re hung up on is whether or not intelligence can be increased through education or even at all through your life then I say with pretty good certainty, based on what we know so far, intelligence is absolutely something that requires work through your life to increase.
You need exposure to data, concepts, ideas, and even other people’s ways of thinking to reach your full potential. I’ll leave you with a scientific journal specifically analyzing the genetic and environmental factors (including education) that affect cognitive ability.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289621000635